Guidelines for the Use of Artificial Intelligence in Patent Examination Procedures (Patent Office, August 2026)

Patent examination is, in the Guidelines' own description, document-intensive, technically complex, legally evolving and time-sensitive. The introduction cites research showing that AI tools can help suggest search terms, retrieve and rank documents, visualise content and reduce the time and cost of screening large numbers of patents, and that more recent work examines their use in novelty analysis. It also points to Government of India policy documents, including NITI Aayog's Responsible AI approach documents, that support a structured and responsible approach to AI in public functions with human oversight, accountability, safety, transparency, privacy and risk-based governance.²

The Guidelines were published on the IP Office website on 7 August 2026 as a news item and in the guidelines section.¹³ Their stated purpose is to identify how the benefits of AI tools may be used in examination without compromising the technical, statutory and quasi-judicial functions of the Examiner and Controller. The illustrative examples in Annexure I were prepared with certain public generative AI tools and certain private tools accessible to the Patent Office; because the tools are proprietary, the Guidelines do not name them. The Office says the Guidelines may need revision as the technology evolves.²

The document is separate from the Office's 2025 examination guidelines for computer related inventions, which deal with the patentability of AI inventions and are covered in another entry.

The Guidelines apply to AI used in examination tasks such as screening, classification, search, translation support, drafting support, technical comparison or knowledge retrieval, with the objective of supporting efficiency and quality while preserving confidentiality, accountability, consistency and the independent application of mind by the Examiner or Controller.²

They define AI, prompts, generative AI, AI tools, public AI tools (those accessible to the public through free or commercial means, including both free-tier and paid versions of consumer platforms) and private AI tools (systems operating in closed or restricted environments, often trained on proprietary or controlled datasets and suitable for sensitive data), as well as AI-assisted output, in which a human in the loop provides direction, context and oversight. They add that the patent search databases to which the Office subscribes have built-in AI tools designed for patent search, which are private tools offering better data security and better understanding of patent prompts.²

Section 3 sets out 14 limitations and risks, framed as reasons for thorough human oversight:²

A table in Section 4 lists twelve typical uses, with the possible benefit, the potential risks and the safeguards required for each. In summary:²

• Classification. AI may suggest candidate IPC/CPC classes, but the class must be checked against an authenticated source such as the WIPO or CPC website, verified against the claims read with the full specification and adjusted manually.
• Search terms. The officer must choose which terms are close to the claimed subject matter and which are technically adjacent but legally different, with complete human oversight.
• Claim-feature extraction. The claim must be re-read manually to confirm that features are not split or merged wrongly, numerical ranges and dependencies must be verified, and no search or novelty or inventive-step analysis may rest on an unverified AI-generated feature list.
• Translation support. The translation must be read with the drawings and surrounding disclosure, and reliance on machine translation must be recorded in the reasoning.
• Improving drafts. AI may be used only after the officer has prepared the substantive draft, limited to grammar and readability, and every statement in the revised draft must be checked.
• Citations. No AI-suggested citation may be used unless independently verified in the original source; case law must be verified from the actual judgment, and an unverifiable citation must be discarded.
• Preliminary novelty and inventive-step analysis. AI output is treated only as a preliminary, assistive input; each mapped feature must be verified from the prior-art document, distinguishing features and amendments examined independently, and the final conclusion must rest on the officer's own analysis.
• Clarity, prior-art search and sufficiency. AI may be used for preliminary issue-spotting or with officially subscribed tools, but no objection may be issued unless the officer is personally satisfied of its legal and technical basis.
• Understanding case law. AI may be used only for preliminary orientation, and no AI-generated verbatim quote, ratio or paragraph may be relied on without checking the primary source.
• Public generative AI and unpublished material. This use is prohibited; only approved internal tools may be used, and material must not be entered into an unapproved external system if there is doubt.

Section 3.2 states that AI is intended to assist and not to replace the functions of the Examiner or Controller. The examiner or Controller "shall remain fully responsible" for every official act involving AI in any manner, and the use of AI "shall not dilute or transfer" that responsibility.²

Section 5 prohibits six uses:²

1. Entering unpublished patent application contents, confidential office records or internal deliberative material into public AI tools.
2. Using AI as a substitute for the examiner's or Controller's application of mind on substantive matters such as novelty, inventive step, industrial applicability, sufficiency, clarity or unity of invention.
3. Issuing office actions, first examination reports, hearing notices, decisions or other official communications solely on AI-generated output without adequate human oversight.
4. Citing case law, prior art, scientific literature or other references suggested by AI without independent verification from authentic sources.
5. Using AI-generated content in official communications without review, correction and adoption by the concerned officer.
6. Relying solely on AI for decision-making affecting the rights of applicants, patentees or third parties, especially in cases with opposing parties, for instance opposition proceedings.

Section 6 on administrative measures is permissive. The competent authority may prescribe that material AI use in specified functions be recorded, with the tool, nature of use, date and other information, for supervision, audit or quality review. It may set up a dedicated AI Governance Committee, made up of examiners and controllers from the Examination Division and officers from the IT Office and the QMS Division, to approve tools, classify uses as permitted or prohibited, prescribe safeguards and conduct pilot studies, review errors and complaints, revise the Guidelines and consult AI experts. It may also arrange training and capacity building and, where appropriate, provide for independent audit, impact assessment, feedback mechanisms and incident reporting systems.²

Annexure II contains a checklist and declaration for officers.

In a two-part series on SpicyIP, Praharsh Gour credited the Guidelines for being cautious and for repeatedly stressing human oversight, and acknowledged real efficiency gains in classification and claim-feature extraction. The first part, published on 31 August 2026, argued that the main concern is that the Guidelines permit AI in preliminary novelty and obviousness assessments, which are substantive tasks. Because verification takes place after the officer has seen the AI's mapping of claims to prior art, the officer may test whether the proposed correspondence holds instead of asking independently whether the reference discloses the feature. The post suggested a mandatory independent review of the prior art before the AI mapping is consulted, and warned that tools built for similarity and pattern matching may carry hindsight problems in judging obviousness, and that AI-flagged "gaps" could skew sufficiency review.⁴

The post also raised a transparency point: if an examiner uses AI for claim mapping, the applicant may not know how the mapping was produced, and the post did not identify any provision requiring disclosure of AI use to applicants. The author said a second part would address institutional checks and accountability.⁴

As of 15 October 2026 the Guidelines remain published on the IP Office website, in English and Hindi, in the guidelines section.³ The sources reviewed do not show whether the AI Governance Committee provided for in Section 6 has been constituted, whether recording of AI use has been prescribed or whether any revisions have been issued.

The Guidelines apply to the Patent Office's own use of AI. They do not address whether applicants may use AI to draft specifications, nor the inventorship and patentability of AI-assisted or AI-generated inventions, which are governed by the Patents Act, 1970 and the Office's 2025 guidelines on computer related inventions.